Gina Kaus (1893–1985)

Gina Kaus was born Regina Wiener to an Austrian Jewish family in Vienna. In 1913, at age 20, she married Josef Zirner, a musician who was killed in World War I. She became the lover of Josef Kranz, a married banker, and with his financial support began her career as a writer. She also got to know other writers such as Franz Werfel and Robert Musil. Her first play, Diebe in Haus (Thieves in the House), written under the pseudonym Andreas Eckbrecht, was produced by the Vienna Burgtheater in 1919. The following year, she married fellow writer Otto Kaus, with whom she had two sons before divorcing in 1926. Gina Kaus also wrote her first novel Die Aufstig (The Rise) in 1920, which won the Theodor Fontane Prize. In 1925, she began publishing her own magazine Die Mutter to help educate mothers. Her career as a successful novelist was interrupted by Nazi Germany's annexation (Anschluss) of Austria in 1938, and she fled with her family to Paris. There she wrote her final novel, Der Terfel nebanan (The Devil Next Door), before emigrating to the USA in 1939. After a few months in New York City, she settled in Hollywood. She wrote more than two dozen film scripts, including some based on her novels. In 1979, she published an autobiography, Und was für ein Leben...mit Liebe und Literatur, Theater und Film (And What a Life ... with Love and Literature, Theatre and Film).